Viewsonic Pro8200 Projector Review

In this section we consider the brightness, sharpness, and image noise of the Viewsonic Pro8200 home theater projector. Also considered are the physical attributes of light leakage and audible noise

Viewsonic Pro8200 Brightness

No shortage of lumens here! Although the Pro8200 projector isn’t the brightest of the entry level 1080p home theater projectors, only two others have measured brighter. Since the Pro8200’s more limited color controls prevented a true “best mode, we ended up with one all purpose bright mode. With the adjustments Mike made while calibrating, he gave up a couple hundred lumens for better color, but that still left us with a measured 1460 lumens!

That would be down from the unadjusted, measured, 1653 lumens. The good news is that it’s color performance, the way Mike set it up (at 1460 lumens) produces better color than the “quick-cal” done in the other projectors’ reviews. The two competitors with more lumens are the BenQ W1000 with a whopping 2179 lumens, and the Vivitek H1080FD, with 1777. The more expensive Epson HC8350 can pretty much match the maximum lumens, but the Viewsonic would have the better color, when both are at max. The Epson would do better in less bright modes.

Lumen Output and Color Temp at 100 IRE (mid zoom)

Brightest

1653 @ 7232

Standard

1529 @ 7718

Theater

1296 @ 7891

Dark Room

839 @ 7993

User 1

1108 @ 10280

User 2

1108 @ 10277

Lumen Output and Color Temp at 100 IRE (mid zoom):

NOTE: There are three other color temps in addition to Mid, but Mid gives the highest lumen output.

By default, Dark Room is on Eco lamp. With Eco off, Dark Room has same lumens as Standard

Effect of zoom on lumen output (Brightest mode)

Zoom out:

1648

Mid-zoom:

1653

Zoom in

1271

Lumen Output (Eco-mode, Brightest): 1306

The 1306 lumens in Brightest mode, represents a drop of approximately 21% from full power

That’s one strange lens. We’re used to a modest boost in lumens going from mid-point where we do most measurements, to full wide angle, and a bigger reduction going to full telephoto. In this case, though effectively no change in brightness at all, going to wide angle. Strange.

Pre-calibration we measured these color temperatures (target is 6500K) over the grayscale range.

Standard Color Temp over IRE Range (the best mode, Pre calibration)

30 IRE (dark grey)

8172

50 IRE (medium grey)

8142

80 IRE

7685

100 IRE (white)

7718

Pre-calibration we measured these color temperatures (target is 6500K) over the grayscale range.

That’s not exactly the numbers we would like to see – which would be close to 6500 across the whole range from white (100IRE) to dark gray (30IRE). These numbers are way on the cool side, and there are definite, visibly dimminished reds. Mike was able to correct that shift nicely with the calibration.

The Calibration page will provide the settings we used. That includes basic settings as well as gain and offset. We will revise, with numbers from a production projector if there are color table changes, between this unit and full production ones. I don’t expect that to be the case, though